THE  MARX  HE  KtfEW 


By   JOHN    SPARGO 


REESE  LIBRARY  , 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


The   Marx   He   Knew 


KARL    MARX. 


The  Marx  He  Knew 


JOHN  SPARGO 


Author  of  * 'The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children,"  "Social- 
ism, A  Summary  and  Interpretation  of  Socialist 
Principles,"   "The  Common  Sense  of 
Socialism,"  "Karl  Marx:    His 
Life  and  Work,"  Etc., 
Etc.,  Etc. 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
1909 


Copyright,  1909 
Bv  CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 


TO 

MADAME  LAURA  LAFARGUE 

DAUGHTER    OF  KARL  MARX 


214914 


List  of  Illustrations 

KARL  MARX,  FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH   -  Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

His  BIRTHPLACE  AT  TRIER,  FROM  AN  OLD 

PRINT  10 

JOHANNA  BERTHA  JULIE  VON  WESTPHALEN, 

FROM  A  PAINTING  FROM  LIFE  -  -  -  19 

FREDERICK  ENGELS,  FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  32 

FERDINAND  LASSALLE,  FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH      -  47 

THE  MARX  FAMILY  GRAVE,  FROM  A  PHOTO- 
GRAPH     ---------83 


THE  MARX  HE  KNEW 


The  pale,  yellow  light  of  the  waning 
day  streamed  through  the  dusty  window 
panes  of  the  little  cigar  shop,  and  across 
the  bench  where  old  Hans  Fritzsche 
worked  and  hummed  the  melody  of  Der 
Freiheit  the  while. 

The  Young  Comrade  who  sat  in  the 
corner  upon  a  three-legged  stool  seemed 
not  to  hear  the  humming.  His  eyes  were 
fixed  upon  a  large  photograph  of  a  man 
which  hung  in  a  massive  oak  frame 
above  the  bench  where  Old  Hans  rolled 
cigars  into  shape.  The  photograph  was 
old  and  faded,  and  the  written  inscrip- 
tion beneath  it  was  scarcely  legible.  The 
gaze  of  the  Young  Comrade  was  wistful 
and  reverent. 

[7] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"Tell  me  about  him,  Hans,"  he  said 
at  last. 

Old  Hans  stopped  humming  and 
looked  at  the  Young  Comrade.  Then 
his  eyes  wandered  to  the  portrait  and 
rested  upon  it  in  a  gaze  that  was  like- 
wise full  of  tender  reverence. 

Neither  spoke  again  for  several  sec- 
onds and  only  the  monotonous  ticking 
of  the  clock  upon  the  wall  broke  the  op- 
pressive silence. 

"Ach!  he  was  a  wonderful  man,  my 
comrade/'  said  Old  Hans  at  length. 

"Yes,  yes,  he  was  a  wonderful  man — 
one  of  the  most  wonderful  men  that  ever 
lived,"  responded  the  Young  Comrade 
in  a  voice  that  was  vibrant  with  relig- 
ious enthusiasm. 

Both  were  silent  again  for  a  moment 
and  then  the  Young  Comrade  contin- 
ued :  "Yes,  Marx  was  a  wonderful  man, 
Hans.  And  you  knew  him — saw  him 

[8] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

smile — heard  him  speak — clasped  his 
hand — called  him  comrade  and  friend  I" 

"Aye,  many  times,  many  times,"  an- 
swered Old  Hans,  nodding.  "Hundreds 
of  times  did  we  smoke  and  drink  to- 
gether— me  and  him/' 

"Ah,  that  was  a  glorious  privilege, 
Hans,"  said  the  Young  Comrade  fer- 
vently. "To  hear  him  speak  and  touch 
his  hand — the  hand  that  wrote  such 
great  truths  for  the  poor  working  peo- 
ple— I  would  have  gladly  died,  Hans. 
Why,  even  when  I  touch  your  hand  now, 
and  think  that  it  held  his  hand  so  often, 
I  feel  big — strong — inspired." 

"Ach,  but  my  poor  old  hand  is  noth- 
ing," answered  Old  Hans  with  a  depre- 
cating smile.  "Touching  the  hand  of 
such  a  man  matters  nothing  at  all,  for 
genius  is  not  contagious  like  the  small- 
pox," he  added. 

"But  tell  me  about  him,  Hans,"  plead- 

[9] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

ed  the  Young  Comrade  again.  "Tell  me 
how  he  looked  and  spoke — tell  me  every- 
thing." 

"Well,  you  see,  we  played  together  as 
boys  in  the  Old  Country,  in  Treves. 
Many  a  time  did  we  fight  then!  Once 
he  punched  my  eye  and  made  it  swell 
up  so  that  I  could  hardly  see  at  all,  but 
I  punched  his  nose  and  made  it  bleed 
like — well,  like  a  pig." 

"What!  you  made  him  bleed?" 

"Ach!  that  was  not  much;  all  boys 
fight  so." 

"Well?" 

"My  father  was  a  shoemaker,  you  see, 
and  we  lived  not  far  away  from  where 
Karl's  people  lived.  Many  a  time  my 
father  sent  me  to  their  house — on  the 
Bruckergrasse  —  with  mended  shoes. 
Then  I  would  see  Karl,  who  was  just  as 
big  as  I  was,  but  not  so  old  by  a  year. 

[10] 


BIRTHPLACE   OF    KARL    MARX. 


THE     MARX    HE    KNEW 

Such  a  fine  boy !  Curly-headed  he  was, 
and  fat — like  a  little  barrel  almost. 

"So,  when  I  took  the  shoes  sometimes 
I  would  stop  and  play  with  him  a  bit — 
play  with  Karl  and  the  girls.  He  was 
always  playing  with  girls — with  his  sis- 
ter, Sophie,  and  little  Jenny  von  West- 
phalen. 

Sometimes  I  liked  it  not  so — playing 
with  girls.  They  were  older  than  we 
boys  and  wanted  everything  to  go  their 
way,  and  I  liked  not  that  girls  should 
boss  boys.  So  once  I  teased  him  about 
it — told  him  that  he  was  a  baby  to  play 
with  girls.  Then  it  was  that  we  fought 
and  he  gave  me  a  black  eye  and  I  gave 
him  a  bloody  nose  in  return. 

"Sometimes  the  Old  Man,  Karl's 
father,  would  come  into  my  father's 
shop  and  stay  a  long  while  chatting.  He 
was  a  lawyer  and  father  only  a  shoe- 
maker; he  was  quite  rich,  while  father 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

was  poor,  terribly  poor.  But  it  made  no 
difference  to  Herr  Marx.  He  would 
chat  with  father  by  the  hour. 

"You  see,  he  was  born  a  Jew,  but — 
before  Karl  was  born — he  turned  Chris- 
tian. Father  had  done  the  same  thing, 
years  before  I  was  born.  Why  he  did 
it  father  would  never  tell  me,  but  once 
I  heard  him  and  Heinrich  Marx — that 
was  the  name  of  Karl's  father — talking 
about  it,  so  I  got  a  pretty  good  idea  of 
the  reason. 

"  'Of  course,  I  am  not  a  believer  in  the 
Christian  doctrines,  friend  Wilhelm.' 
he  said  to  my  father.  •  'I  don't  believe 
that  Jesus  was  God,  nor  that  he  was  a 
Messiah  from  God.  But  I  do  believe  in 
a  God — in  one  God  and  no  more. 

"  'And  I'm  not  so  dishonorable  as  to 
have  become  a  Christian,  and  to  have 
had  my  children  baptized  as  Christians, 
simply  to  help  me  in  my  profession/  he 

[12] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

said.  'Some  of  our  Hebrew  friends  have 
said  that,  but  it  is  not  true  at  all.  As 
I  see  it,  friend  Wilhelm,  Judaism  is  too 
narrow,  too  conservative.  Christianity 
makes  for  breadth,  for  culture,  for  free- 
dom. And  it  is  keeping  to  ourselves,  a 
people  set  apart,  which  makes  us  Jews 
hated  and  despised,  strangers  in  the 
I9hd.  To  become  one  with  all  our  fel- 
low citizens,  to  break  down  the  walls 
of  separation,  is  what  we  need  to  aim 
at.  That  is  why  I  forsook  Judaism, 
Wilhelm.'  ~ls 

"From  the  way  that  father  nodded  his 
head  and  smiled  I  could  tell,  though  he 
said  little,  that  he  was  the  same  sort  of 
a  Christian." 

"But  it  was  about  him,  the  son,  that 
you  were  speaking,  Hans." 

"Ach,  be  patient.  Time  is  more  plen- 
tiful than  money,  boy,"  responded  Hans, 
somewhat  testily. 

[13] 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

"Well,  of  course,  we  went  to  the  same 
school,  and  though  Karl  was  younger 
than  me  we  were  in  the  same  class.  Such 
a  bright,  clever  fellow  he  was !  Always 
through  with  his  lessons  before  any  of 
the  rest  of  us,  he  was,  and  always  at 
the  top  of  the  class.  And  the  stories  he 
could  tell,  lad!  Never  did  I  hear  such 
stories.  In  the  playground  before  school 
opened  we  used  to  get  around  him  and 
make  him  tell  stories  till  our  hair  stood 
on  end." 

"And  was  his  temper  cheerful  and 
good — was  he  well  liked?"  asked  the 
Young  Comrade. 

"Liked?  He  was  the  favorite  of  the 
whole  school,  teachers  and  all,  my  boy. 
Never  was  he  bad  tempered  or  mean. 
Nobody  ever  knew  Karl  to  do  a  bad 
thing.  But  he  was  full  of  mischief  and 
good-hearted  fun.  He  loved  to  play 

[14] 


THE     MARX     HE     KNEW 

tricks  upon  other  boys,  and  sometimes 
upon  the  teachers,  too. 

"He  could  write  the  funniest  verses 
about  people  you  ever  heard  in  your  life, 
and  sometimes  all  the  boys  and  girls  in 
the  school  would  be  shouting  his  rhymes 
as  they  went  through  the  streets.  If 
another  boy  did  anything  to  him,  Karl 
^ould  write  some  verses  that  made  the 
fellow  look  like  a  fool,  and  we  would  all 
recite  them  just  to  see  the  poor  fellow 
get  mad.  Such  fun  we  had  then.  But, 
I  tell  you,  we  were  awfully  afraid  of 
Karl's  pin-pricking  verses! 

"Once,  I  remember  well,  we  had  a 
bad-tempered  old  teacher.  He  was  a 
crabbed  old  fellow,  and  all  the  boys  got 
to  hate  him.  Always  using  the  rod,  he 
was.  Karl  said  to  me  one  day  as  we 
were  going  home  from  school:  'The 
crooked  old  sinner !  I'll  make  him  wince 
with  some  verses  before  long,  Hans,' 

[15] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

and  then  we  both  laughed  till  we  were 
sore." 

"And  did  he  write  the  verses?"  asked 
the  Young  Comrade. 

"Write  them?  I  should  say  he  did! 
You  didn't  know  Karl,  or  you  would 
never  ask  such  a  question  as  that.  Next 
morning,  when  we  got  in  school,  Karl 
handed  around  a  few  copies  of  his  poem 
about  old  Herr  von  Hoist,  and  pretty 
soon  we  were  all  tittering.  The  whole 
room  was  in  a  commotion. 

"Of  course,  the  teacher  soon  found 
out  what  was  wrong  and  Karl  was 
called  outside  and  asked  to  explain  about 
them.  'I'm  a  poet,  Herr  teacher/  he 
said,  'and  have  a  poet's  license.  You 
must  not  ask  a  poet  to  explain.'  Of 
course,  we  all  laughed  at  that,  and  the 
poor  Herr  von  Hoist  was  like  a  great 
mad  bull." 

"And  was  he  disciplined?" 

[16] 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

"To  be  sure  he  was !  His  father  was 
very  angry,  too.  But  what  did  we  care 
about  that?  We  sang  the  verses  on  the 
streets,  and  wrote  them  on  the  walls  or 
anywhere  else  that  we  could.  We  made 
it  so  hot  for  the  poor  teacher  that  he 
had  to  give  up  and  leave  the  town.  I 
wish  I  could  remember  the  verses,  but 
I  never  was  any  good  for  remembering 
poetry,  and  it  was  a  long,  long  time  ago 
— more  than  three  score  years  ago  now. 

"We  thought  it  was  funny  that  Karl 
never  gave  over  playing  with  the  girls 
— his  sister  and  Jenny  von  Westphalen. 
When  we  were  all  big  boys  and  ashamed 
to  be  seen  playing  with  girls,  he  would 
play  with  them  just  the  same,  and 
sometimes  when  we  asked  him  to  play 
with  us  he  would  say,  'No,  boys,  I'm 
going  to  play  with  Jenny  and  Sophie 
this  afternoon/  We'd  be  mad  enough 
at  this,  for  he  was  a  good  fellow  to  have 

[17] 


THE     MARX     HE     KNEW 

in  a  game,  and  sometimes  we  would  try 
to  tease  him  out  of  it.  But  he  could 
call  names  better  than  we  could,  and 
then  we  were  all  afraid  of  his  terrible 
verses.  So  we  let  him  alone  lest  he 
make  us  look  silly  with  his  poetry. 

"Well,  I  left  school  long  before  Karl 
did.  My  father  was  poor,  you  see,  and 
there  were  nine  of  us  children  to  feed 
and  clothe,  so  I  had  to  go  to  work.  But 
I  always  used  to  be  hearing  of  Karl's 
cleverness.  People  would  talk  about 
him  in  father's  shop  and  say,  That  boy 
Marx  will  be  a  Minister  of  State  some 
day/ 

"By  and  by  we  heard  that  he  had  gone 
to  Bonn,  to  the  University,  and  every- 
body thought  that  he  would  soon  become 
a  great  man.  Father  was  puzzled  when 
Heinrich  Marx  came  in  one  day  and 
talked  very  sadly  about  Karl.  He  said 
that  Karl  had  wasted  all  his  time  at 

[18] 


JOHANNA    BERTHA    JULIE    JENNY    VON 
WESTPHALEN. 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

Bonn  and  learned  nothing,  only  getting 
into  a  bad  scrape  and  spending  a  lot  of 
money.  Father  tried  to  cheer  him  up, 
but  he  was  not  to  be  comforted.  'My 
Karl — the  child  in  whom  all  my  hopes 
were  centered — the  brightest  boy  in 
Treves — is  a  failure,'  he  said  over  and 
over  again. 

"Soon  after  that  Karl  came  home  and 
I  saw  him  nearly  every  day  upon  the 
streets.  He  was  most  always  with  Jen- 
ny von  Westphalen,  and  people  smiled 
and  nodded  their  heads  when  the  two 
passed  down  the  street.  My!  What  a 
handsome  couple  they  made !  Jenny  was 
the  beauty  of  the  town,  and  all  the  young 
men  were  crazy  about  her.  They  wrote 
poems  about  her  and  called  her  all  the 
names  of  the  goddesses,  but  she  had  no 
use  for  any  of  the  fellows  except  Karl. 
And  he  was  as  handsome  a  fellow  as 
ever  laughed  into  a  girl's  eyes.  He  was 

[19] 


THE     MARX     HE     KNEW 

tall  and  straight  as  a  line,  and  had  the 
most  wonderful  eyes  I  ever  saw  in  my 
life.  They  seemed  to  dance  whenever 
he  smiled,  but  sometimes  they  flashed 
fire  —  when  he  was  vexed,  I  mean. 
But  I  suppose  that  what  the  girls  liked 
best  was  his  great  mass  of  coal  black 
curls. 

"The  girls  raved  about  Karl,  and  he 
could  have  had  them  all  at  his  feet  if 
he  would.  I  know,  for  I  had  two  sis- 
ters older  than  myself,  and  I  heard  how 
they  and  their  friends  used  to  talk  about 
him.  But  Karl  had  no  eyes  for  any  girl 
but  Jenny,  except  it  was  his  sister. 

"Folks  all  said  that  Karl  and  Jenny 
would  marry..  Rachel — that's  my  oldest 
sister — said  so  one  night  at  the  supper 
table,  but  our  good  mother  laughed  at 
her.  'No,  Rachel,  they'll  never  marry/ 
she  said.  'Jenny  might  be  willing 
enough,  but  the  old  Baron  will  never  let 

[20] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

her  do  it.  Karl's  father  is  rich  alongside 
of  poor  people  like  us,  but  poor  enough 
compared  with  Jenny's  father.  Karl  is 
no  match  for  the  beautiful  Jenny/ 

"Then  father  spoke  up.  'You  forget, 
mother,  that  Heinrich  Marx  is  the  best 
friend  that  old  Baron  von  Westphalen 
has,  and  that  the  Baron  is  as  fond  of 
Karl  as  of  Jenny.  And  anyway  he  loves 
Jenny  so  much  that  he'd  be  sure  to  let 
her  marry  whoever  she  loved,  even  if 
the  man  had  not  a  thaler  to  his  name.' 

"Soon  Karl  went  away  again  to  the 
University  at  Berlin,  not  back  to  Bonn. 
Thought  he'd  get  on  better  at  Berlin, 
I  suppose.  He  might  have  been  gone  a 
year  or  more  when  his  father  came  into 
father's  little  shop  one  day  while  I  was 
there.  He  said  that  Karl  wasn't  doing 
as  well  at  Berlin  as  he  had  expected. 
He  tried  to  laugh  it  off,  saying  that  the 
boy  was  in  love  and  would  probably 

[21] 


THE     MARX     HE     KNEW 

settle  down  to  work  soon  and  come  out 
all  right,  upon  top  as  usual. 

"It  was  then  that  we  learned  for  the 
first  time  that  Karl  and  Jenny  were 
betrothed,  and  that  the  old  Baron  had 
given  his  blessing  to  his  daughter  and 
her  lover.  Very  soon  all  the  gossips 
of  the  town  were  talking  about  it. 
Some  said  that  there  had  been  quite  a 
romance  about  it ;  that  the  young  folks 
had  been  secretly  engaged  for  nearly  a 
year,  being  afraid  that  the  Baron 
would  object.  'Twas  even  said  that  Karl 
had  been  made  ill  by  the  strain  of  keep- 
ing the  secret.  Then,  when  at  last  Karl 
wrote  to  old  Westphalen  about  it, 
and  asked  for  Jenny  in  a  manly  fashion, 
the  old  fellow  laughed  and  said  that  he 
had  always  hoped  it  would  turn  out 
that  way.  So  the  silly  young  couple 
had  suffered  a  lot  of  pain  which  they 
could  have  avoided. 

[22] 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

"Of  course,  lots  of  folks  said  that  it 
wasn't  a  'good  match,'  that  Jenny  von 
Westphalen  could  have  married  some- 
body a  lot  richer  than  Karl;  but  they 
all  had  to  admit  that  she  couldn't  get  a 
handsomer  or  cleverer  man  than  Karl 
in  all  the  Rhine  Province. 

"But  things  seemed  to  be  going 
badly  enough  with  Karl  at  the  Univer- 
sity. Herr  Heinrich  Marx  cried  in  our 
little  shop  one  evening  when  my  father 
asked  him  how  Karl  was  doing.  He 
said  that,  instead  of  studying  hard  to 
be  a  Doctor  of  Laws,  as  he  ought  to  do, 
Karl  was  wasting  his  time.  'He  writes 
such  foolish  letters  that  I  am  ashamed 
of  him,'  said  the  old  man.  'Wastes  his 
time  writing  silly  verses  and  romances 
and  then  destroying  most  of  them ;  talks 
about  becoming  a  second  Goethe,  and 
says  he  will  write  the  great  Prussian 
drama  that  will  revive  dramatic  art. 

[23] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

He  spends  more  money  than  the  sons 
of  the  very  rich,  and  I  fear  that  he  has 
got  into  bad  company  and  formed  evil 
habits/ 

"Then  father  spoke  up.  'Don't  be 
afraid/  he  said.  Til  wager  that  Karl  is 
'all  right,  and  that  he  will  do  credit 
to  the  old  town  yet.  Some  of  our  great- 
est men  have  failed  to  pass  their  exam- 
inations in  the  universities  you  know, 
Herr  Marx,  while  some  of  the  most 
brilliant  students  have  done  nothing 
worthy  of  note  after  leaving  the  uni- 
versities crowned  with  laurels.  There 
is  nothing  bad  about  Karl,  of  that  you 
may  be  sure/ 

"The  old  man  could  hardly  speak. 
He  took  father's  hand  and  shook  it 
heartily :  'May  it  be  so,  friend  Wilhelm, 
may  it  be  so,'  he  said.  I  never  saw  the 
old  man  again,  for  soon  after  that  he 
died. 

[24] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"Karl  came  home  that  Easter,  look- 
ing pale  and  worn  and  thin.  I  was 
shocked  when  he  came  to  see  me,  so 
grave  and  sad  was  he.  We  went  over 
to  the  old  Roman  ruins,  and  he  talked 
about  his  plans.  He  had  given  up  all 
hopes  of  being  a  great  poet  then  and 
wanted  to  get  a  Doctor's  degree  and 
become  a  Professor  at  the  University. 
1  reminded  him  of  the  verses  fee  wrote 
about  some  of  the  boys  at  school,  and 
about  the  old  teacher,  Herr  von  Hoist, 
and  we  laughed  like  two  careless  boys. 
He  stood  upon  a  little  mound  and  re- 
cited the  verses  all  over  as  though  they 
had  been  written  only  the  week  before. 
Ach,  he  looked  grand  that  night  in  the 
beautiful  moonlight! 

"Then  came  his  father's  death,  and 
I  did  not  see  him  again,  except  as  the 
funeral  passed  by.  He  went  back  to 
Berlin  to  the  University,  and  I  went 

[25] 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

soon  after  that  away  from  home  for  my 
wander jahre,  and  for  a  long  time  heard 
nothing  about  Karl. 


II 


"Two  or  three  years  after  that  I  was 
working  in  Cologne,  where  I  had  a 
sweetheart,  when  I  read  in  a  paper,  the 
Rhenische  Zeitung,  that  there  would  be 
a  democratic  meeting.  I  liked  the  demo- 
cratic ideas  which  I  found  in  the  paper, 
for  they  were  all  in  the  interest  of  poor 
toilers  like  myself.  So  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  go  to  the  meeting. 

"So  that  night  I  went  to  the  meeting 
and  listened  to  the  speeches.  Presently 
he  came  in.  I  didn't  see  him  at  first, 
but  heard  a  slight  noise  back  of  me  and 
heard  someone  near  me  say  'Here  comes 
Doctor  Marx/  Then  I  turned  and  saw 

[26] 


THE     MARX    HE     KNEW 

Karl  making  his  way  to  the  front,  all 
eyes  fastened  upon  him.  I  could  see 
in  a  moment  that  he  was  much  beloved. 

"Then  Karl  made  a  speech.  He  was 
not  a  great  orator,  but  spoke  clearly 
and  right  to  the  point  in  very  simple 
language.  The  speaker  who  spoke  be- 
fore him  was  very  eloquent  and  fiery, 
and  stirred  the  audience  to  a  frenzy. 
But  never  a  sound  of  applause  greeted 
Karl's  speech;  he  was  listened  to  in 
perfect  silence. 

"This  made  me  feel  that  KarPs  speech 
was  a  great  failure,  but  next  day  I 
found  that  the  only  words  I  remembered 
of  all  that  were  spoken  that  evening 
were  the  words  Karl  spoke..  It  was  the 
same  way  with  the  other  men  in  the 
shop  where  I  worked.  As  they  dis- 
cussed the  meeting  next  day,  it  was 
KarPs  speech  they  remembered  and  dis- 
cussed. That  was  like  Karl:  he  had 

[27] 


THE     MARX     HE     KNEW 

a  way  somehow  of  saying  things  you 
couldn't  forget. 

"When  the  meeting  was  over  I  was 
slinking  away  without  speaking  to  him. 
I  suppose  that  I  was  bashful  and  a  bit 
afraid  of  the  grave  'Doctor  Marx/  the 
great  man.  But  he  saw  me  going  out 
and  shouted  my  name.  'Wait  a  minute, 
Hans  Fritzsche/  he  cried,  and  came  run- 
ning to  me  with  outstretched  hands. 
Then  he  insisted  upon  introducing  me 
to  all  the  leaders.  'This  is  my  good 
friend,  Herr  Fritzsche,  with  whom  I 
went  to  school/  he  said  to  them. 

"Nothing  would  satisfy  him  but  that 
I  should  go  with  the  other  leaders  and 
himself  for  a  little  wine,  and  though  I 
was  almost  afraid  lest  in  such  com- 
pany I  seem  foolish,  I  went.  You  should 
have  heard  Karl  talk  to  those  leaders, 
my  boy!  It  was  wonderful,  and  I  sat 
and  drank  in  every  word.  One  of  the 

[28] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

great  men  was  urging  that  the  time 
had  come  for  some  desperate  action. 
'Nothing  but  a  bloody  revolution  can 
help  the  working  people,  Herr  Marx/ 
he  said.  But  Karl  smiled  quietly,  and 
I  thought  I  could  see  the  old  scornful 
curl  of  his  lip  as  he  said:  'Revolution? 
\  es,  but  not  yet,  Herr,  not  yet,  and  per- 
haps not  a  bloody  one  at  all/  Ach, 
what  quiet  power  seemed  to  go  with  his 
words ! 

"After  the  little  crowd  broke  up  Karl 
took  me  with  him  to  his  office.  Then  I 
learned  that  he  was  the  editor  of  the 
Rhenische  Zeitung,  and  that  the  articles 
i  had  read  in  the  paper  pleading  for 
the  poor  and  oppressed  and  denouncing 
the  government  were  written  by  him. 
I  felt  almost  afraid  of  him  then,  so  won- 
derful it  seemed  that  he  should  have 
become  so  great  and  wise.  But  Karl 
soon  put  all  my  fears  to  rest,  and  made 

[29] 


THE  'MARX     HE     KNEW 

me  forget  everything  except  that  we 
were  boys  from  home  enjoying  the 
memories  of  old  times. 

"Well,  I  saw  him  often  after  that, 
for  I  joined  the  Democratic  Club.  Then 
the  government  suppressed  the  paper, 
and  Karl  went  away  to  Paris.  Before 
he  went  he  came  to  say  good  bye  and 
told  me  that  he  was  to  marry  Jenny  von 
Westphalen  before  going  to  Paris,  and 
I  told  him  that  I  was  going  to  marry, 
too. 

"But  we  never  thought  that  we  should 
meet  each  other  upon  our  honeymoons, 
as  we  did.  I  was  at  Bingen  with  my 
Barbara  the  day  after  our  wedding  when 
I  heard  someone  calling  my  name,  and 
when  I  turned  to  see  who  it  was  that 
called  me  there  stood  Karl  and  his  Jenny 
laughing  at  me  and  my  Barbara,  and  all 
of  us  were  blushing  like  idiots.  Such 

[30] 


THE    MARK    HE    KNEW 

happy  days  those  were  that  we  spent 
at  old  Bingen ! 

"I  went  back  to  Cologne,  to  work  in 
the  shop  belonging  to  my  Barbara's 
father,  and  Karl  went  to  Paris.  That 
was  in  forty-three.  We  heard  from  him 
sometimes,  and  later  on  we  used  to  get 
copies  of  a  paper,  Vorwarts,  which  pub- 
lished articles  by  Karl  and  other  great 
men.  Bakunin  wrote  for  it,  I  remem- 
ber, and  so  did  Heine  and  Herwegh,  our 
sweet  singers. 

"That  paper  was  stopped,  too.  We 
heard  that  Guizot  had  suppressed  the 
paper  and  ordered  Karl  and  some  of 
the  other  writers  to  be  expelled  from 
France.  It  was  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt  who  persuaded  Guizot,  so  it  was 
said.  I  got  a  letter  from  Karl  to  say 
that  he  had  settled  in  Brussels  with  his 
wife  and  that  there  was  a  baby,  a  lit-. 

[31] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

tie  Jenny,  eight  months  old.    Our  little 
Barbara  was  just  the  same  age. 

"Not  long  after  that  letters  came  to 
the  club  asking  for  Karl's  address. 
They  were  from  Engels,  of  whom  I  had 
never  heard  before.  I  would  not  give 
the  address  until  we  found  out  that 
Engels  was  a  true  friend  and  comrade. 
We  were  all  afraid,  you  see,  lest  some 
enemy  wanted  to  hurt  Karl.  It  was 
good,  though,  that  I  could  send  the  ad- 
dress to  Engels,  for  I  believe  that  he 
sent  some  money  to  help  Karl  out  of  a 
very  hard  struggle.  If  we  had  known 
that  he  was  in  trouble  we,  his  friends  in 
Cologne,  would  have  sent  money  to 
help,  but  Karl  was  too  proud  I  suppose 
to  let  his  trouble  be  known  to  us. 


III. 

"It  was  in  the  winter  of  1847  that  I 

[32] 


FREDERICK  ENGELS. 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

saw  him  again,  in  London.  For  months 
all  the  workingmen's  societies  had  been 
agitated  over  the  question  of  forming 
an  international  association  with  a 
regular  programme,  which  Karl  had 
been  invited  to  draw  up.  A  congress 
was  to  be  held  in  London  for  the  pur- 
pose of  considering  Karl's  programme 
and  I  was  sent  by  the  Cologne  comrades 
as  a  delegate.  All  the  members  'chip- 
ped in'  to  pay  my  expenses,  and  I  was 
very  happy  to  go — happy  because  I 
should  see  him  again. 

"So  I  was  present  at  the  rooms  of  ( 
the  Arbeiterbildungsverein,  in  Great 
Windmill  Street,  when  Karl  read  the 
declaration  of  principles  and  programme 
he  had  prepared.  That  was  the  Com- 
munist Manifesto,  you  know." 

"What !  were  you  really  present  when 
that  immortal  declaration  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  our  class  was  read,  Hans?" 

[33] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"Aye,  lad,  I  was  present  during  all 
the  ten  days  the  congress  lasted.  Never, 
never  shall  I  forget  how  our  Karl  read 
that  declaration.  Like  a  man  inspired 
he  was.  I,  who  have  heard  Bernstein 
and  Niemann  and  many  another  great 
actor  declaim  the  lines  of  famous 
classics,  never  heard  such  wonderful 
declamation  as  his.  We  all  sat  spell- 
bound and  still  as  death  while  he  read. 
Tears  of  joy  trickled  down  my  cheeks, 
and  not  mine  alone.  When  he  finished 
reading  there  was  the  wildest  cheering. 
I  lost  control  of  myself  and  kissed  him 
on  both  cheeks,  again  and  again.  He 
liked  not  that,  for  he  was  always 
ashamed  to  have  a  fuss  made  over  him. 

"But  Karl — he  always  insisted  that 
I  should  call  him  'Karl/  as  in  boyhood 
days — had  shown  us  that  day  his  inner 
self;  bared  the  secret  of  his  heart,  you 
might  say.  The  workers  of  all  countries 

[34] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

must  unite — only  just  that,  unite!  And 
that  night,  after  the  long  session  of  the 
congress,  when  he  took  me  away  with 
Engels  and  a  few  other  friends — I  re- 
member that  Karl  Pfander  was  one — 
he  could  speak  of  little  else:  the  work- 
ers must  be  united  somehow,  and  who- 
ever proposed  further  divisions  instead 
of  unity  must  be  treated  as  a  traitor. 

"Some  there  were  who  had  not  his 
patience.  Few  men  have,  my  lad,  for 
his  was  the  patience  of  a  god.  They 
wanted  'action/  'action/  'action/  and 
some  of  them  pretended  that  Karl  was 
just  a  plain  coward,  afraid  of  action. 
There  was  one  little  delegate,  a  French- 
man, who  tried  to  get  me  to  vote  against 
the  'coward  Marx' — me  that  had  known 
Karl  since  we  were  little  shavers  to- 
gether, and  that  knew  him  to  be  fear- 
less and  lion-hearted.  I  just  picked  the 
creature  up  and  shook  him  like  a  ter- 

'[35] 


THE    MAKX    HE    KNEW 

rier  shakes  a  rat  and  he  squealed  bit- 
terly. I  don't  think  he  called  Karl  a 
coward  again  during  the  congress. 

"Of  course,  Karl  had  courage  enough 
for  anything.  But  he  was  too  wise  to 
imagine  that  any  good  could  come  from 
a  few  thousand  untrained  workingmen, 
armed  with  all  sorts  of  implements,  dan- 
gerous most  to  themselves,  challenging 
the  trained  hosts  of  capitalist  troops. 
That  was  the  old  idea  of  'Revolution/ 
you  know,  and  it  took  more  courage  to 
advocate  the  long  road  of  patience  than 
it  would  take  to  join  in  a  silly  riot.  And 
Karl  showed  them  that,  too,  by  his  calm 
look  and  scornful  treatment  of  their  cry 
for  'action/  The  way  he  silenced  the 
noisy  followers  of  Wilhelm  Weitling — 
who  was  not  a  bad  fellow,  mind — was 
simply  wonderful  to  see.  Oh,  he  was 
a  born  leader  of  men,  was  Karl. 

"When  the  congress  was  all  over,  I 

[36J 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

meant  to  stay  a  few  days  in  London  to 
see  the  great  city.  Barbara  had  a  sister 
living  over  in  Dean  street  and  so  it 
would  cost  me  nothing  to  stay.  But 
Karl  came  to  me  and  begged  me  to  go 
back  by  way  of  Brussels.  He  and 
Engels  were  returning  there  at  once, 
and  would  like  to  have  me  go  with  them. 
I  didn't  \vant  to  go  at  first,  but  when 
Karl  said  that  there  were  some  messages 
he  wanted  me  to  take  back  to  Cologne, 
why,  of  course,  I  went. 

"Ach,  what  a  glorious  time  we  had  on 
that  journey  to  Brussels!  Sometimes 
Karl  and  Engels  would  talk  seriously 
about  the  great  cause,  and  I  just  listened 
and  kept  my  mouth  shut  while  my  ears 
were  wide  open.  At  other  times  they 
would  throw  off  their  seriousness  as  a 
man  throws  off  a  coat,  and  then  they 
would  tell  stories  and  sing  songs,  and 
of  course  I  joined  in.  People  say — 

[37] 


THE    MARK    HE    KNEW 

people  that  never  knew  the  real  Karl— 
that  he  was  gloomy  and  sad,  that  he 
couldn't  smile.  I  suppose  that  is  because 
they  never  saw  the  simple  Karl  that  I 
knew  and  loved,  but  only  Marx,  the 
great  leader  and  teacher,  with  a  thou- 
sand heavy  problems  burdening  his 
mind.  But  the  Marx  that  I  knew — my 
friend  Karl — was  human,  boy,  very 
human.  He  could  sing  a  song,  tell  a 
good  story,  and  enjoy  a  joke,  even  at 
his  own  expense." 

A  smile  lit  up  the  face  of  the  Young 
Comrade.  "I'm  so  glad  of  that,  Hans," 
he  said.  "I've  always  been  told  that 
he  was  a  sad  man,  without  a  sense  of 
humor;  that  he  was  never  known  to 
unbend  from  his  stiff  gravity.  But  you 
say  that  he  was  not  so;  that  he  could 
laugh  and  joke  and  sing:  I  like  him 
better  so." 

Old  Hans   seemed  not  to  hear  the 

[38] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

words  of  the  Young  Comrade,  though 
he  was  silent  while  they  were  spoken. 
A  faint  smile  played  around  his  lips, 
and  the  far-away  expression  of  his  eyes 
told  that  the  smile  belonged  to  the  mem- 
ory of  other  days.  It  was  dark  now  in 
the  little  shop ;  only  the  flickering  light 
of  the  fitful  fire  in  the  tiny  grate  enabled 
the  Young  Comrade  to  see  his  friend. 

It  was  the  Young  Comrade  who  broke 
the  silence  at  last:  "Tell  me  more, 
Hans,  for  I  am  still  hungry  to  learn 
about  him." 

The  old  man  nodded  and  turned  to 
put  some  chips  upon  the  fire  in  the 
grate.  Then  he  continued : 

"It  was  about  the  last  of  February, 
1848,  that  we  got  the  first  copies  of  the 
Communist  Manifesto  at  Cologne.  Only 
a  day  or  two  before  that  we  had  news 
of  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  in 
Paris.  I  have  still  my  copy  of  the 

[39] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

Manifesto  which  Karl  sent  me  from 
Paris. 

"You  see,  he  had  been  expelled  from 
Brussels  by  order  of  the  Government. 
Prussia  had  requested  this,  so  Karl 
wrote  me,  and  he  was  arrested  and  or- 
dered to  leave  Belgium  at  once.  So  he 
went  at  once  to  Paris.  Only  a  week 
before  that  the  Provisional  Government 
had  sent  him  an  official  invitation  to 
come  back  to  the  city  from  which  Guizot 
had  expelled  him.  It  was  like  a  con- 
queror that  he  went,  you  may  imagine. 

"Boy,  you  can  never  understand  what 
we  felt  in  those  days.  Things  are  not 
so  any  more.  We  all  thought  that  the 
day  of  our  victory  was  surely  nigh.  Karl 
had  made  us  believe  that  when  things 
started  in  France  the  proletariat  of  all 
Europe  would  awaken:  'When  the  Gal- 
lican  cock  crows  the  German  workers 
will  rise/  he  used  to  say.  And  now  the 

[40] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

cock's  crowing  had  been  heard!  The 
Revolution  was  successful  in  France — 
so  we  thought — and  the  people  were 
planting  trees  of  liberty  along  the 
boulevards. 

"Here  in  England,  too,  the  Spirit  of 
the  Revolution  was  abroad  with  her 
flaming  torch.  The  Chartists  had  come 
together,  and  every  day  we  expected  to 
hear  that  the  monarchy  had  been  over- 
thrown and  a  Social  Republic  estab- 
lished. Of  course,  we  knew  that  Char- 
tism was  a  'bread  and  butter  question' 
at  the  bottom,  and  that  the  Chartists' 
cause  was  ours. 

"Well,  now  that  we  had  heard  the 
Gallican  cock,  we  wanted  to  get  things 
started  in  Germany,  too.  Every  night 
we  held  meetings  at  the  club  in  Cologne 
to  discuss  the  situation.  Some  of  us 
wanted  to  begin  war  at  once.  You  see, 
the  Revolution  was  in  our  blood  like 

[41] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

strong  wine:  we  were  drunk  with  the 
spirit,  lad. 

"When  Karl  wrote  that  we  must  wait, 
that  we  must  have  patience,  there  was 
great  disappointment.  We  thought  that 
we  should  begin  at  once,  and  there  were 
some  who  said  that  Karl  was  afraid,  but 
I  knew  that  they  were  wrong,  and  told 
them  so.  There  was  a  fierce  discussion 
at  the  meeting  one  night  over  a  letter 
which  I  had  received  from  Karl,  and 
which  he  wanted  me  to  read  to  the  mem- 
bers. 

"George  Herwegh  was  in  Paris,  so  the 
letter  said,  and  was  trying  hard  to  raise 
a  legion  of  German  workingmen  to 
march  into  the  Fatherland  and  begin 
the  fight.  This,  Karl  said,  was  a  ter- 
rible mistake.  It  was  useless,  to  begin 
with,  for  what  could  such  a  legion  of 
tailors  and  cigarmakers  and  weavers  do 
against  the  Prussian  army?  It  was 

[42] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

plain  that  the  legion  would  be  annihil- 
lated.  Besides,  it  would  hurt  the  cause 
in  another  way  by  taking  out  of  Paris 
thousands  of  good  revolutionists  who 
were  needed  there. 

"  'Tell  the  comrades/  he  wrote,  'that 
it  is  not  a  question  of  cowardice  or  fear, 
but  of  wisdom.  It  takes  more  courage 
to  live  for  the  long  struggle  than  to  go 
out  and  be  shot/  He  wanted  the  com- 
rades to  wait  patiently  and  to  do  all 
they  could  to  persuade  their  friends  in 
Paris  not  to  follow  Herwegh's  advice. 
Most  of  the  Germans  in  Paris  followed 
Karl's  advice,  but  a  few  followed  Her- 
wegh  and  marched  into  Baden  later  on, 
to  be  scattered  by  the  regular  troops  as 
chaff  is  scattered  by  the  wind. 

"The  German  comrades  in  Paris  sent 
us  a  special  manifesto,  which  Karl 
wrote,  and  we  were  asked  to  distribute 
it  among  the  working  people.  That 

[43] 


THE    MAEX    HE    KNEW 

would  be  a  good  way  to  educate  the 
workers,  Karl  wrote  to  our  committee, 
but  I  tell  you  it  seemed  a  very  small 
thing  to  do  in  those  trying  times,  and 
it  didn't  satisfy  the  comrades  who  were 
demanding  more  radical  revolutionary 
action.  Why,  even  I  seemed  to  forget 
Karl's  advice  for  a  little  while. 

"On  the  13th  of  March— you'll  re- 
member that  was  the  day  on  which 
more  than  a  hundred  thousand  Chartists 
gathered  on  Kennington  Common — the 
revolution  broke  out  in  Vienna.  Then 
things  began  to  move  in  Cologne,  too. 
As  soon  as  the  news  came  from  Vienna, 
August  von  Willich,  who  had  been  an 
artillery  officer,  led  a  big  mob  right  into 
the  Cologne  Council  Chamber.  I  was 
in  the  mob  and  shouted  as  loud  as  any- 
body. We  demanded  that  the  authori- 
ties should  send  a  petition  to  the  King, 

[44] 


THE    MAKX    HE     KNEW 

in  the  name  of  the  city,  demanding  free- 
dom and  constitutional  government. 

"And  then  on  the  18th,  the  same  day 
that  saw  the  people  of  Berlin  fighting 
behind  barricades  in  the  streets — a 
great  multitude  of  us  Cologne  men 
marched  through  the  streets,  led  by  Pro- 
fessor Gottfried  Kinkel,  singing  the 
Marseillaise  and  carrying  the  forbidden 
flag  of  revolution,  the  black,  red  and 
gold  tricolor." 

"And  where  was  he — Marx — during 
all  this  time?"  asked  the  Young  Com- 
rade. 

"In  Paris  with  Engels.  We  thought 
it  strange  that  he  should  be  holding 
aloof  from  the  great  struggle,  and  even 
I  began  to  lose  faith  in  him.  He  had 
told  us  that  the  crowing  of  the  Galli- 
can  cock  would  be  the  sign  for  the  revo- 
lution to  begin,  yet  he  was  silent.  It 
was  not  till  later  that  I  learned  from  his 

[45] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

own  lips  that  he  saw  from  the  start  that 
the  revolution  would  be  crushed;  that 
the  workers  opportunity  would  not 
come  until  later. 


IV. 

"He  told  me  that  when  he  came  to 
Cologne  with  Engels.  That  was  either 
the  last  of  April  or  the  beginning  of 
May,  I  forget  which.  My  wife  rushed 
in  one  evening  and  said  that  she  had 
seen  Karl  going  up  the  street.  I  had 
heard  that  he  was  expected,  but  thought 
it  would  not  be  for  several  days.  So 
when  Barbara  said  that  she  had  seen 
him  on  the  street,  I  put  on  my  things 
in  a  big  hurry  and  rushed  off  to  the  club. 
There  was  a  meeting  that  night,  and  I 
felt  pretty  sure  that  Karl  would  get 
there. 

[46] 


FERDINAND    LASSALLE. 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"When  the  meeting  was  more  than 
half  through,  I  heard  a  noise  in  the 
back  of  the  hall  and  turned  to  see  Karl 
and  Engels  making  their  way  to  the 
platform.  There  was  another  man  with 
them,  a  young  fellow,  very  slender  and 
about  five  feet  six  in  height,  handsome 
as  Apollo  and  dressed  like  a  regular 
dandy.  I  had  never  seen  this  young 
man  before,  but  from  what  I  had  heard 
and  read  I  knew  that  it  must  be  Fer- 
dinand Lassalle. 

"They  both  spoke  at  the  meeting. 
Lassalle's  speech  was  full  of  fire  and 
poetry,  but  Karl  spoke  very  quietly  and 
slowly.  Lassalle  was  like  a  great  actor 
declaiming,  Karl  was  like  a  teacher  ex- 
plaining the  rules  of  arithmetic  to  a  lot 
of  schoolboys." 

"And  did  you  meet  Lassalle,  too?" 
asked  the  Young  Comrade  in  awed 
tones. 

[47] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

"Aye,  that  night  and  many  times 
after  that.  Karl  greeted  me  warmly  and 
introduced  me  to  Lassalle.  Then  we 
went  out  for  a  drink  of  lager  beer — 
just  us  four — Karl,  Lassalle,  Engels 
and  me.  They  told  me  that  they  had 
come  to  start  another  paper  in  the  place 
of  the  one  that  had  been  suppressed 
five  years  before.  Money  had  been 
promised  to  start  it,  Karl  was  to  be  the 
chief  editor  and  Engels  his  assistant. 
The  new  paper  was  to  be  called  the  Neue 
Rhenische  Zeitung  and  Freiligrath, 
George  Weerth,  Lassalle,  and  many  oth- 
ers, were  to  write  for  it.  So  we  drank 
a  toast  to  the  health  and  prosperity  of 
the  new  paper. 

"Well,  the  paper  came  out  all  right, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  Karl's  at- 
tacks upon  the  government  brought 
trouble  upon  it.  The  middle  class  stock- 
holders felt  that  he  was  too  radical,  and 

[48] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

when  he  took  the  part  of  the  French 
workers,  after  the  terrible  defeat  of 
June,  they  wanted  to  get  rid  of  their 
chief  editor.  There  was  no  taming  a 
man  like  Karl. 

"One  day  I  went  down  to  the  office 
with  a  notice  for  a  committee  of  which 
I  was  a  member,  and  Karl  introduced 
me  to  Michael  Bakunin,  the  great  Rus- 
sian Anarchist  leader.  Karl  never  got 
along  very  well  with  Bakunin  and  there 
was  generally  war  going  on  between 
them. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  of  Robert  Blum, 
my  lad?  Ever  read  the  wonderful 
verses  Freiligrath  wrote  about  him?  I 
suppose  not.  Well,  Blum  was  a  moder- 
ate Democrat,  a  sort  of  Liberal  who  be- 
longed to  the  Frankfort  National  As- 
sembly. When  the  insurrection  of  Oc- 
tober, 1848,  broke  out  in  Vienna  Blum 
was  sent  there  by  the  National  As- 

[49] 


THE    MAKX    HE    KNEW 

sembly,  the  so-called  'parliament  of  the 
people/ 

"He  assumed  command  of  the  revo- 
lutionary forces  and  was  captured  and 
taken  prisoner  by  the  Austrian  army 
and  ordered  to  be  shot.  I  remember 
well  the  night  of  the  ninth  of  February 
when  the  atrocious  deed  was  committed. 
We  had  a  great  public  meeting.  The 
hall  was  crowded  to  suffocation.  I 
looked  for  Karl,  but  he  was  nowhere  to 
be  seen.  He  was  a  very  busy  man,  you 
see,  and  had  to  write  a  great  deal  for 
his  paper  at  night. 

"It  was  getting  on  for  ten  o'clock 
when  Karl  appeared  in  the  hall  and 
made  his  way  in  silence  to  the  platform. 
Some  of  the  comrades  applauded  him, 
but  he  raised  his  hand  to  silence  them. 
We  saw  then  that  he  held  a  telegram 
in  his  hand,  and  that  his  face  was  as 
pale  as  death  itself.  We  knew  that 

[50] 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

something  terrible  had  happened,  and 
a  great  hush  fell  over  the  meeting.  Not 
a  sound  could  be  heard  until  Karl  be- 
gan to  read. 

"The  telegram  was  very  brief  and 
very  terrible.  Robert  Blum  had  been 
shot  to  death  in  Vienna,  according  to 
martial  law,  it  said.  Karl  read  it  with 
solemn  voice,  and  I  thought  that  I  could 
see  the  murder  taking  place  right  there 
in  the  hall  before  my  eyes.  I  suppose 
everybody  felt  just  like  that,  for  there 
was  perfect  silence — the  kind  of  silence 
that  is  painful — for  a  few  seconds.  Then 
we  all  broke  out  in  a  perfect  roar  of 
fury  and  cheers  for  the  Revolution. 

"I  tried  to  speak  to  Karl  after  the 
meeting,  but  he  brushed  me  aside  and 
hurried  away.  His  face  was  terrible  to 
behold.  He  was  the  Revolution  itself 
in  human  shape.  As  I  looked  at  him  I 

[51] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

knew  that  he  would  live  to  avenge  poor 
Blum. 

"Blum's  death  was  followed  by  the 
coup  de'  etat.  The  King  appointed  a 
new  ministry  and  the  National  As- 
sembly was  dissolved.  The  Neue 
Rhenische  Zeitung  came  out  then  with 
a  notice  calling  upon  all  citizens  to 
forcibly  resist  all  attempts  to  collect 
taxes  from  them.  That  meant  war,  of 
course,  war  to  the  knife,  and  we  all 
knew  it. 

"Karl  was  arrested  upon  a  charge  of 
treason,  inciting  people  to  armed  resist- 
ance to  the  King's  authority.  We  all 
feared  that  it  would  go  badly  with  him. 
There  was  another  trial,  too,  Karl  and 
Engels  and  a  comrade  named  Korff, 
manager  of  the  paper,  were  placed  on 
trial  for  criminal  libel.  I  went  to  this 
trial  and  heard  Karl  make  the  speech 
for  the  defence.  The  galleries  were 

[52] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

crowded  and  when  he  got  through  they 
applauded  till  the  rafters  shook.  'If 
Marx  can  make  a  speech  like  that  at  the 
'treason'  trial,  no  jury  will  convict/  was 
what  everybody  in  the  galleries  said. 

"When  Awe  got  outside — oh,  I  forgot 
to  say  that  the  three  defendants  were 
acquitted,  didn't  I?  Well,  when  we  got 
outside,  I  told  Karl  what  all  the  com- 
rades, and  many  who  were  not  com- 
rades at  all,  were  saying  about  his  de- 
fence. He  was  pleased  to  hear  it,  I  be- 
lieve, but  all  that  he  would  say  was,  'I 
shall  do  much  better  than  that,  Hans, 
much  better  than  that.  Unless  I'm  mis- 
taken, I  can  make  the  public  prosecutor 
look  like  an  idiot,  Hans/ 

"You  can  bet  that  I  was  at  the 
'treason'  trial  two  days  later.  I  pressed 
Karl's  hand  as  he  went  in,  and  he  looked 
back  and  winked  at  me  as  mischievously 
as  possible,  but  said  not  a  word.  The 

[53] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

lawyers  for  the  government  bitterly  at- 
tacked Karl  and  the  two  other  members 
of  the  executive  of  the  Democratic  Club 
who  were  arrested  with  him.  But 
their  abuse  was  mostly  for  Karl.  He 
was  the  one  they  were  trying  to  strike 
down,  any  fool  could  see  that. 

"Well,  when  the  case  for  the  prose- 
cution was  all  in,  Karl  began  to  talk  to 
the  jury.  He  didn't  make  a  speech  ex- 
actly, but  just  talked  as  he  always  did 
when  he  sat  with  a  few  friends  over  a 
glass  of  lager.  In  a  chatty  sort  of  way, 
he  explained  the  law  to  the  jury,  showed 
where  the  clever  lawyers  for  the  gov- 
ernment had  made  big  mistakes,  and 
proved  that  he  knew  the  law  better  than 
they  did.  After  that  he  gave  them  #, 
little  political  lecture,  you  might  say. 
He  explained  to  them  just  how  he  looked 
at  the  political  questions — always  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  working  people. 

[54] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"Sitting  beside  me  was  an  old  man,  a 
Professor  of  Law  they  told  me  he  was. 
He  sat  there  with  his  eyes  fastened 
upon  Karl,  listening  with  all  his  ears  to 
every  word.  'Splendid!  Splendid! 
Wonderful  logic/  I  heard  him  say  to 
himself.  'What  a  lawyer  that  man 
would  make!'  I  watched  the  faces  of 
the  jury  and  it  was  plain  to  see  that 
Karl  was  making  a  deep  impression 
upon  them,  though  they  were  all  mid- 
dle class  men.  Even  the  old  judge  for- 
got himself  and  nodded  and  smiled 
when  Karl's  logic  made  the  prosecution 
look  foolish.  You  could  see  that  the 
old  judge  was  admiring  the  wonderful 
mind  of  the  man  before  him. 

"Well,  the  three  prisoners  were  ac- 
quitted by  the  jury  and  Karl  was  greatly 
pleased  when  the  jury  sent  one  of  their 
members  over  to  say  that  they  had 
passed  a  vote  of  thanks  to  'Doctor  Marx' 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

for  the  very  interesting  and  instructive 
lecture  he  had  given  them.  I  tell  you, 
boy,  I  was  prouder  than  ever  of  Karl 
after  that,  and  went  straight  home  and 
wrote  letters  to  half  a  dozen  people  in 
Treves  that  I  knew,  telling  them  all 
about  Karl's  great  speech.  You  see,  I 
knew  that  he  would  never  send  word 
back  there,  and  I  wanted  everybody  in 
the  old  town  to  know  that  Karl  was 
making  a  great  name  in  the  world. 

"The  government  got  to  be  terribly 
afraid  of  Karl  after  that  trial,  and  when 
revolutionary  outbreaks  occurred  all 
through  the  Rhine  Province,  the  follow- 
ing May,  they  suppressed  the  paper  and 
expelled  Karl  from  Prussia. 

"We  had  a  meeting  of  the  executive 
committee  to  consider  what  was  to  be 
done.  Karl  said  that  he  was  going  to 
Paris  at  once,  and  that  his  wife  and 
children  would  follow  next  day.  Engels 

[56] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

was  going  into  the  Palatinate  of  Ba- 
varia to  fight  in  the  ranks,  with  An- 
necke,  Kinkel,  and  Carl  Schurz.  All 
the  debts  in  connection  with  the  paper 
had  been  paid,  he  told  us,  so  that  no 
dishonor  could  attach  to  its  memory. 

"It  was  not  until  afterward  that  we 
heard  how  the  debts  of  the  paper  had 
been  paid.  Karl  had  pawned  all  the 
silver  things  belonging  to  his  wife,  and 
sold  lots  of  furniture  and  things  to  get 
the  money  to  pay  the  debts.  They  were 
not  his  debts  at  all,  and  if  they  were  his 
expulsion  would  have  been  a  very  good 
reason  for  leaving  the  debts  unpaid. 
But  he  was  not  one  of  that  kind.  Hon- 
est as  the  sun,  he  was.  It  was  just  like 
him  to  make  the  debts  his  own,  and  to 
pinch  himself  and  his  family  to  pay 
them.  More  than  once  Karl  and  his 
family  had  to  live  on  dry  bread  in 
Cologne  in  order  to  keep  the  paper 

[57] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

going.  My  Barbara  found  out  once  in 
some  way  that  Karl's  wife  and  baby 
didn't  have  enough  to  eat,  and  when  she 
came  home  and  told  me  we  both  cried 
ourselves  to  sleep  because  of  it." 

"Could  none  of  the  comrades  help 
them,  Hans?" 

"Ach,  that  was  pretty  hard,  my  boy, 
for  Karl  was  very  proud,  and  I  guess 
Jenny  was  prouder  still.  Barbara  and 
1  put  our  heads  together  and  says  she: 
'We  must  put  some  money  in  a  letter 
and  send  it  to  him  somehow,  in  a  way 
that  he  will  never  know  where  it  came 
from,  Hans.'  Karl  knew  my  writing, 
but  not  Barbara's,  so  she  wrote  a  lit- 
tle letter  and  put  in  all  the  money  she 
had  saved  up.  'This  is  from  a  loyal 
comrade  who  knows  that  Doctor  Marx 
and  his  family  are  in  need  of  it/  she 
wrote.  Then  we  got  a  young  comrade 
who  was  unknown  to  Karl  and  Engels 

[58] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

to  deliver  the  letter  to  Karl  just  as  he 
was  leaving  for  his  office  one  morning. 

"Barbara  and  I  were  very  happy  that 
day  when  we  knew  that  Karl  had  re- 
ceived the  money,  but  bless  your  life  I 
don't  believe  it  did  him  any  good  at  all. 
He  just  gave  it  away." 

"Gave  away  the  money — that  was  giv- 
ing away  his  children's  bread — almost. 
Did  he  do  that?" 

"Well,  all  I  know  is  that  I  heard  next 
day  that  Karl  had  visited  that  same 
evening,  a  comrade  who  was  sick  and 
poor  and  in  deep  distress,  and  that  when 
he  was  leaving  he  had  pressed  money 
into  the  hand  of  the  comrade's  wife,  tell- 
ing her  to  get  some  good  food  and  wine 
for  her  sick  husband.  And  the  amount 
of  the  money  he  gave  her  was  exactly 
the  same  as  that  we  had  sent  to  him  in 
the  morning. 

"Karl  was  always  so.     He  was  the 

[59] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

gentlest,  kindest-hearted  man  I  ever 
knew  in  my  life.  He  could  suffer  in 
silence  himself,  never  complaining,  but 
he  could  not  stand  the  sight  of  another's 
misery.  He'd  stop  anything  he  was 
doing  and  go  out  into  the  street  to  com- 
fort a  crying  child.  Many  and  many  a 
time  have  I  seen  him  stop  on  the  street 
to  watch  the  children  at  play,  or  to  pick 
up  some  crying  little  one  in  his  great 
strong  arms  and  comfort  it  against  his 
breast.  Never  could  he  keep  pennies  in 
his  pocket ;  they  all  went  to  comfort  the 
children  he  met  on  the  streets.  Why, 
when  he  went  to  his  office  in  the  morn- 
ings he  would  very  often  have  from  two 
to  half  a  dozen  children  clinging  around 
him,  strange  children  who  had  taken  a 
fancy  to  him  because  he  smiled  kindly 
at  them  and  patted  their  heads. 

"I  heard  nothing  from  Karl  for  quite 
a  while  after  he  went  to  Paris.    We  won- 

[60] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

dered,  Barbara  and  I,  why  he  did  not 
write.  Then,  one  day,  about  three 
months  after  he  had  gone  to  Paris,  came 
a  letter  from  .London  and  we  saw  at  once 
that  it  was  in  his  handwriting.  He'd 
been  expelled  from  Paris  again  and  com- 
pelled to  leave  the  city  within  twenty- 
four  hours,  and  he  and  his  family  were 
staying  in  cheap  lodgings  in  Camber- 
well.  He  said  that  everything  was  going 
splendidly,  but  never  a  word  did  he  say 
about  the  terrible  poverty  and  hardship 
from  which  they  were  suffering. 


V 

"Well,  a  few  months  after  that,  I  man- 
aged to  get  into  trouble  with  the  au- 
thorities at  Cologne,  along  with  a  few 
other  comrades.  We  heard  that  we  were 
to  be  arrested  and  knew  that  we  could 

[61] 


THE    MAKX    HE     KNEW 

expect  no  mercy.  So  Barbara  and  I 
talked  things  over  and  we  decided  to 
clear  out  at  once,  and  go  to  London. 
We  sold  our  few  things  to  a  good  com- 
rade, and  with  the  money  made  our  way 
at  once  to  join  Barbara's  sister  in  Dean 
street.  I  never  dreamed  that  we  should 
find  Karl  living  next  door  to  us. 

"But  we  did.  Nobody  told  me  about 
him — I  suppose  that  nobody  in  our 
house  knew  who  he  was — but  a  few 
days  after  we  arrived  I  saw  him  pass 
and  ran  out  and  called  to  him.  My,  he 
looked  so  thin  and  worn  out  that  my 
heart  ached!  But  he  was  glad  to  see 
me  and  grasped  my  hand  with  both  of 
his.  Karl  could  shake  hands  in  a  way 
that  made  you  feel  he  loved  you  more 
than  anybody  else  in  all  the  world. 

"In  a  little  while  he  had  told  me 
enough  for  me  to  understand  why  he 
was  so  pale  and  thin.  If  it  were  not 

[62] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

for  hurting  his  feelings,  I  could  have 
cried  at  the  things  he  told  me.  He  and 
the  beautiful  Jenny  without  food  some- 
times, and  no  bed  to  lie  upon !  And  it 
seemed  all  the  worse  to  me  because  I 
knew  how  well  they  had  been  reared, 
how  they  had  been  used  to  solid  com- 
fort and  even  luxury. 

"But  it  was  not  from  Karl  that  I 
learned  the  worst.  He  was  always  try- 
ing to  hide  the  worst.  Never  did  I  hear 
of  such  a  man  as  he  was  for  turning 
things  bright  side  upwards.  But  Conrad 
Schramm,  who  was  related  to  Barbara 
— a  sort  of  second  cousin,  I  think — 
lodged  in  the  same  house  with  us. 
Schramm  was  the  closest  friend  Karl 
and  Jenny  had  in  London  then,  and  he 
told  me  things  that  made  my  heart 
bleed.  Why,  when  a  little  baby  was 
born  to  them,  soon  after  they  came  to 
London,  there  was  no  money  for  a  doc- 

[63] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

tor,  nor  even  to  buy  a  cheap  cradle  for 
the  little  thing. 

"For  years  that  poverty  continued.  I 
used  to  see  Karl  pretty  near  every  day 
until  I  fell  and  hurt  my  head  and  broke 
my  leg  in  two  places  and  was  kept  in 
the  hospital  many  months.  Barbara 
had  to  go  out  to  work  then,  washing 
clothes  for  richer  folks,  and  we  couldn't 
offer  to  help  dear  old  Karl  as  we  would. 
So  we  just  pretended  that  we  didn't 
know  anything  about  the  poverty  that 
was  making  him  look  so  haggard  and 
old.  Karl  would  have  died  from  the 
worry,  I  believe,  if  it  had  not  been  for 
the  children.  They  kept  him  young  and 
cheered  him  up.  He  might  not  have 
had  anything  but  dry  bread  to  eat  for 
days,  but  he  would  come  down  the 
street  laughing  like  a  great  big  boy,  a 
crowd  of  children  tugging  at  his  coat 
and  crying  'Daddy  Marx !  Daddy  Marx ! 

[64] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

Daddy  Marx!'  at  the  top  of  their  little 
voices. 

"He  used  to  come  and  see  me  at  the 
hospital  sometimes.  No  matter  how 
tired  and  worried  he  might  be — and  I 
could  tell  that  pretty  well  by  looking  at 
his  face  when  he  didn't  Know  that  I  was 
looking — he  always  was  cheerful  with 
me.  He  wanted  to  cheer  me  up,  you 
see,  so  he  told  me  all  the  encouraging 
news  about  the  movement — though 
there  wasn't  very  much  that  was  en- 
couraging— and  then  he  would  crack 
jokes  and  tell  stories  that  made  me 
laugh  so  loud  that  all  the  other  patients 
in  the  room  would  get  to  laughing  too. 

"I  told  him  one  day  about  a  little 
German  lad  in  a  bed  at  the  lower  end 
of  the  ward.  Poor  little  chap,  he  had 
been  operated  on  several  times,  but  there 
was  no  hope.  He  was  bound  to  die,  the 
nurse  told  me.  When  I  told  Karl  the 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

tears  came  into  his  eyes  and  he  kept  on 
moaning,  Toor  little  chap!  So  young! 
Poor  little  chap!'  He  went  down  and 
talked  with  him  for  an  hour  or  more, 
and  I  could  hear  the  boy's  laughter  ring 
through  the  long  hospital  ward.  We'd 
never  heard  him  laugh  before,  for  no 
one  ever  came  to  see  him,  poor  lonesome 
little  fellow. 

"Karl  always  used  to  spend  some  of 
his  time  with  the  little  chap  after  that. 
He  would  bring  books  and  read  to  him 
in  his  mother  tongue,  or  tell  him  won- 
derful stories.  The  poor  little  chap  was 
so  happy  to  see  him  and  always  used  to 
kiss  'Uncle  Mick,'  as  Karl  taught  the 
boy  to  call  him.  And  when  the  little 
fellow  died,  Karl  wept  just  as  though 
the  lad  had  been  his  own  kin,  and  in- 
sisted upon  following  him  to  the  grave." 

"Ah,  that  was  great  and  noble,  Hans ! 

[66] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

How  he  must  have  felt  the  great  uni- 
versal heart-ache!" 

"I  used  to  go  to  the  German  Com- 
munist Club  to  hear  Karl  lecture.  That 
was  years  later,  in  the  winter  of  1856, 
I  think.  Karl  had  been  staying  away 
from  the  club  for  three  or  four  years. 
He  was  sick  of  their  faction  fights,  and 
disgusted  with  the  hot-heads  who  were 
always  crying  for  violent  revolution.  J\ 
saw  him  very  often  during  the  time  that 
he  kept  away  from  the  club,  when  Kinkel 
and  Willich  and  other  romantic  middle- 
class  men  held  sway  there.  Karl  would 
say  to  me :  'Bah !  It's  all  froth,  Hans, 
every  bit  of  it  is  froth.  They  cry  out 
for  revolution  because  the  words  seem 
big  and  impressive,  but  they  mustn't  be 
regarded  seriously.  Pop-gun  revolu- 
tionists they  are !' 

"Well,  as  I  was  saying,  I  heard  the 
lectures  on  political  economy  which  Karl 

[67] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

gave  at  the  club  along  in  fifty-six  and 
fifty-seven.  He  lectured  to  us  just  as 
he  talked  to  the  juries,  quietly  and 
slowly — like  a  teacher.  Then  he  would 
ask  us  questions  to  find  out  how  much 
we  knew,  and  the  man  who  showed  that 
he  had  not  been  listening  carefully  got 
a  scolding.  Karl  would  look  right  at 
him  and  say:  'And  did  you  really  lis- 
ten to  the  lecture,  Comrade  So-and-So?' 
A  fine  teacher  he  was. 

"I  think  that  Karl's  affairs  improved 
a  bit  just  them.  Engels  used  to  help 
him,  too.  At  any  rate,  he  and  his  fam- 
ily moved  out  into  the  suburbs  and  I 
did  not  see  him  so  often.  My  family 
had  grown  large  by  that  time,  and  I  had 
to  drop  agitation  for  a  few  years  to 
feed  and  clothe  my  little  ones.  But  I 
used  to  visit  Karl  sometimes  on  Sun- 
days, and  then  we'd  talk  over  all  that 
had  happened  in  connection  with  the 

[68] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

movement.  I  used  to  take  him  the  best 
cigars  I  could  get,  and  he  always  rel- 
ished them. 

"For  Karl  was  a  great  smoker.  Nearly 
always  he  had  a  cigar  in  his  mouth, 
and,  ugh ! — what  nasty  things  he  had  to 
smoke.  We  used  to  call  his  cigars 
'Marx's  rope-ends/  and  they  were  as 
bad  as  their  name.  That  the  terrible 
things  he  had  to  smoke,  because  they 
were  cheap,  injured  his  health  there  can 
be  no  doubt  at  all.  I  used  to  say  that  it 
was  helping  the  movement  to  take  him. 
a  box  of  decent  cigars,  for  it  was  surely 
saving  him  from  smoking  old  'rope- 
ends.' 

"Poor  Jenny!  She  was  so  grateful 
whenever  I  brought  Karl  a  box  of  cigars. 
'So  long  as  he  must  smoke,  friend 
Fritzsche,  it  is  better  that  he  should 
have  something  decent  to  smoke.  The 
cheap  trash  he  smokes  is  bad  for  him, 

[69] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

I'm  sure/  She  knew,  poor  thing,  that 
the  poverty  he  endured  for  the  great 
Cause  was  killing  Karl  by  inches,  as  you 

|  might  say.  And  I  knew  it,  too,  laddie, 
and  it  made  my  heart  bleed." 

//   "Ah,  he  was  a  martyr,  Hans — a  mar- 

/   tyr  to  the  cause  of  liberty.     And  'the 

blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the 

Church/  always  and  everywhere/'  said 

\  the  Young  Comrade. 


VI 

Old  Hans  was  silent  for  a  few  seconds. 
He  gazed  at  the  photograph  above  his 
bench  like  one  enraptured.  The  Young 
Comrade  kept  silent,  too,  watching  old 
Hans.  A  curious  smile  played  about  the 
old  man's  face.  It  was  he  who  broke 
the  silence  at  length. 

"Of  course,  you've  heard  about  the 

[70] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

International,  lad?  Karl  had  that  pic- 
ture taken  just  about  the  time  that  the 
International  was  started.  Always 
promised  me  a  picture  he  had,  for  years 
and  years.  And  when  he  brought 
me  that  one  Sunday  he  seemed  half 
ashamed  of  himself,  as  if  he  thought  it 
was  too  sentimental  a  thing  for  a  seri- 
ous man  to  do.  'You'll  soon  get  tired 
looking  at  it,  Hans/  he  said. 

"Ach,  I  remember  that  afternoon  as 
though  it  were  only  day  before  yester- 
day. We  were  sitting  smoking  and  talk- 
ing after  dinner  when  Karl  said :  'Hans, 
I've  made  up  my  mind  that  it  is  time 
things  begun  to  move  a  bit— in  connec- 
tion with  the  movement  I  mean.  We 
must  unite,  Hans.  All  the  workers 
ought  to  unite — can  unite — must  unite! 
We've  got  a  good  start  in  the  visit  of 
these  French  and  German  workingmen 
to  the  Universal  Exhibition.  The 

[71J 


THE    MAEX    HE    KNEW 

bourgeoisie  have  shown  the  way.  It 
must  be  done/  Then  he  explained  to 
me  how  the  movement  was  to  be 
launched,  and  1  promised  to  help  as 
much  as  possible  in  my  union.  Karl  al- 
ways wanted  to  get  the  support  of  the 
unions,  and  many  a  time  did  he  come 
to  me  to  get  me  to  introduce  some  mo- 
tion in  my  union. 

"It  was  tnat  way  when  the  great  Civil 
War  broke  out  in  America.  Karl  was 
mad  at  the  way  in  which  Gladstone  and 
the  middle  class  in  general  sided  with 
the  slave-holders  of  the  South.  You 
see,  he  not  only  took  the  side  of  the 
slaves,  but  he  loved  President  Lincoln. 
He  seemed  never  to  get  tired  of  praising 
Lincoln.  One  day  he  came  to  me  and 
said  with  that  quiet  manner  he  had 
when  he  was  most  in  earnest,  'Hans,  we 
must  do  something  to  offset  Gladstone's 
damned  infernal  support  of  the  slave- 

[72] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

traders.  We  must  show  President  Lin- 
coln that  the  working  class  in  this  coun- 
try feel  and  know  that  he  is  in  the  right. 
And  Abraham  Lincoln  belongs  to  us, 
Hans ;  he's  a  son  of  the  working  class/ 

"He  said  a  lot  more  in  praise  of  Lin- 
coln, and  told  me  how  proud  he  was  that 
the  German  Socialists  had  gone  to  the 
war,  all  enlisted  in  the  Northern  army; 
said  he'd  like  to  join  with  Weydemeyer, 
his  old  friend,  who  was  fighting  under 
Fremont.  So  earnest  he  was  about  it! 
Nobody  could  have  guessed  that  the  war 
meant  ruin  to  him  by  cutting  off  his 
only  regular  income,  the  five  dollars  a 
week  he  got  for  writing  for  the  New 
York  Tribune— i  think  that  was  the 
name  of  the  paper. 

"Well,  he  begged  me  to  get  resolu- 
tions passed  at  our  union  condemning 
Gladstone  and  supporting  President 
Lincoln,  and  I  believe  that  our  union 

[73] 


THE    MARK    HE    KNEW 

was  the  first  body  of  workingmen  in 
England  to  pass  such  resolutions.  But 
Karl  didn't  stop  at  that.  He  got  the 
International  to  take  the  matter  up  with 
the  different  workingmen's  societies, 
and  meetings  were  held  all  over  the 
country.  And  he  kept  so  much  in  the 
background  that  very  few  people  ever 
knew  that  it  was  Karl  Marx  who  turned 
the  tide  of  opinion  in  England  to  the  side 
of  Lincoln.  And  when  Lincoln  was  mur- 
dered by  that  crazy  actor,  Booth,  Karl 
actually  cried.  He  made  a  beautiful 
speech,  and  wrote  resolutions  which 
were  adopted  at  meetings  all  over  the 
country.  Ah,  boy,  Lincoln  appreciated 
tJie  support  we  gave  him  in  those  awful 
days  of  the  war,  and  Karl  showed  me 
the  reply  Lincoln  sent  to  the  General 
Council  thanking  them  for  it. 

"Karl  was  always  like  that;   always 
guiding  the  working  people  to  do  the 

[74] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

right  thing,   and  always  letting  other 

people  get  the  credit  and  the  glory.    He 

I 

planned  and  directed  all  the  meetings  of 
tne  workers  demanding*  manhood  suf- 
frage, in  1866,  but  he  never  got  the 
credit  of  it.  All  for  the  cause,  he  was, 
and  never  cared  for  personal  glory.  For 
years  he  gave  all  his  time  to  the  Inter- 
national and  never  got  a  penny  for  all 
he  did,  though  his  enemies  used  to  say 
that  he  was  'getting  rich  out  of  the 
movement/ 

"Ach,  that  used  to  make  me  mad — 
the  way  they  lied  about  Karl.  The 
papers  used  to  print  stories  about  the 
'Brimstone  League/  a  sort  of  'inner 
circle'  connected  with  the  International, 
though  we  all  knew  there  was  never 
such  a  thing  in  existence.  Karl  was 
accused  of  trying  to  plan  murders  and 
bloody  revolutions,  the  very  thing  he 
hated  and  feared  above  everything  else. 

[75] 


THE    MAEX    HE    KNEW 

Always  fighting  those  who  talked  that 
way,  he  was  ;  said  they  were  spies  and 
hired  agents  of  the  enemy,  trying  to 
bring  the  movement  to  ruin.  Didn't  he 
oppose  Weitling  and  Herwegh  and 
Bakunin  on  that  very  ground? 
/  "I  was  with  Karl  when  Lassalle  vis- 
/  ited  him,  in  1862,  and  heard  what  he 
\  said  then  about  foolish  attempts  to  start 
revolutions  by  the  sword.  Lassalle  had 
sent  a  Captain  Schweigert  to  Karl  a 
little  while  before  that  with  a  letter, 
begging  Karl  to  help  the  Captain  raise 
the  money  to  buy  a  lot  of  guns  for  an 
insurrection.  Karl  had  refused  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  scheme,  and 
Lassalle  was  mad  about  it.  'Your  ways 
are  too  slow  for  me,  my  dear  Marx/  he 
said.  'Why,  it'll  take  a  whole  gener- 
ation to  develop  a  political  party  of  the 
proletariat  strong  enough  to  do  any- 
thing/ 


•     . 


THE    MARX    HE     KNEW 

"Karl  smiled  /in  that  quiet  way  he 
had  and  said :  / ' Yes,  it's  slow  enough, 
friend  Lassalle,  slow  enough.  But  we 
want  brains  for  the  foundation  of  our 

revolution — brains,    not    powder.      We 

- 

must  have  patience,  lots  of  patience. 
Mushrooms  grow  up  in  a  night  and  last  \ 
only  a  day;  oaks  take  a  hundred  years 
to  grow,  but  the  wood  lasts  a  thousand 
years.  And  it's  oaks  we  want,  not  mush- 
rooms/ " 

"How  like  Marx  that  was,  Hans," 
said  the  Young  Comrade  then,  "how 
patient  and  far-seeing!  And  whiat  did 
Lassalle  think  of  that?" 

"He  never  understood  Karl,  I  think. 
Anyhow,  Karl  told  me  that  Lassalle 
ceased  to  be  his  friend  after  that 
meeting.  There  was  no  quarrel,  you 
understand,  only  Lassalle  realized  that 
he  and  Karl  were  far  apart  in  their 
views.  'Lassalle  is  a  clever  man  all 

[77] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

right/  Karl  used  to  say,  'but  he  wants 
twelve  o'clock  at  eleven,  like  an  impa- 
tient child/  And  there's  lots  of  folks 
like  Lassalle  in  that  respect,  my  lad; 
folks  that  want  oaks  to  grow  in  a  night 
like  mushrooms. 

**Well,  I  stayed  in  the  International 
until  the  very  last,  after  the  Hague  Con- 
gress when  it  was  decided  to  make  New 
^ork  the  headquarters.  That  was  a 
hard  blow  to  me,  lad.  It  looked  to  me 
as  if  Karl  had  made  a  mistake.  I  felt 
that  the  International  was  practically 
killed  when  the  General  Council  was 
moved  to  America,  and  told  Karl  so. 
But  he  knew  that  as  well  as  I  did,  only 
he  couldn't  help  himself. 

"  'Yes,  Hans,  I'm  afraid  you're  right. 
The  International  can't  amount  to 
much  under  the  circumstances.  But 
it  had  to  be,  Hans,  it  had  to  be.  My 
health  is  very  poor,  and  I'm  about  done 

[78] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 


for,  so  far  as  fighting  is  concerned.    I 
j  simply  can't  keep  on  fighting  Bakunin 
and  his  crowd,  Hans,  and  if  I  drop  the 

1  fight  the  International  will  pass  into 
Bakunin's  control.  And  I'd  rather  see 
the  organization  die  in  America  than 
live  with  Bakunin  at  the  head ;  it's  bet- 
ter so,  better  so,  Hans/  And  it  was 
then,  when  I  heard  him  talk  like  that, 
and  saw  how  old-looking  he  had  grown 
in  a  few  months,  that  I  knew  we  must 
soon  lose  Karl." 


VII 

"But  he  did  not  die  soon — he  lived 
more  than  ten  years  after  that,  Hans," 
said  the  Young  Comrade.  "And  ten 
years  is  a  good  long  time." 

"Ach,  ten  years!  But  what  sort  of 
years  were  they?  Tell  me  that,"  de- 

[79] 


THE    MARK    HE    KNEW 

manded  old  Hans  with  trembling  voice. 
"Ten  years  of  sickness  and  misery — 
ten  years  of  perdition,  that's  what  they 
were,  my  lad!  Didn't  I  see  him  waste 
away  like  a  plant  whose  roots  are 
gnawed  by  the  worms  ?  Didn't  I  see  his 
frame  shake  to  pieces  almost  when  that 
cough  took  hold  of  him?  Aye,  didn't  I 
often  think  that  I'd  be  glad  to  hear  that 
he  was  dead — glad  for  his  own  sake,  to 
think  that  he  was  out  of  pain  at  last? 

"Yes,  he  lived  ten  years,  but  he  was 
dying  all  the  while.  He  must  have  been 
in  pain  pretty  nearly  all  the  time,  every 
minute  an  agony!  'Oh,  I'd  put  an  end 
to  it  all,  Hans,  if  I  didn't  have  to  finish 
Capital/  he  said  to  me  once  as  we 
walked  over  Hampst^ad  Heath,  he  lean- 
ing upon  my  arm.  /'It's  Hell  to  suffer 
so,  year  after  year,  but  I  must  finish 
that  book.  Nothing  I've  ever  done 
means  so  much  as  that  to  the  move- 

[80] 


THE    MABX    HE    KNEW 

ment,  and  nobody  else  can  do  it.  I  must 
live  for  that,  even  though  every  breath 
is  an  agony/; 

"But  he  didn't  live  to  finish  his  task, 
after  all.  It  was  left  for  Engels  to  put 
the  second  and  third  volumes  in  shape. 
A  mighty  good  thing  it  was  for  the 
movement  that  there  was  an  Engels  to 
do  it,  I  can  tell  you.  Nobody  else  could 
have  done  it.  But  Engels  was  like  a 
twin  brother  to  Karl.  Some  of  the  com- 
rades were  a  bit  jealous  sometimes,  and 
used  to  call  Karl  and  Engels  the  'Siam- 
ese twins/  but  that  made  no  difference 
to  anybody.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  Engels 
Karl  wouldn't  have  lived  so  long  as  he 
did,  and  half  his  work  would  never  have 
been  done.  I  never  got  so  close  to  the 
heart  of  Engels  as  I  did  to  Karl,  but  I 
loved  him  for  Karl's  sake,  and  because 
of  the  way  he  always  stood  by  Karl 
through  thick  and  thin. 

[81] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

"I  can't  bear  to  tell  about  the  last 
couple  of  years — how  I  used  to  find  Karl 
sick  abed  in  one  room  and  his  wife,  the 
lovely  Jenny,  in  another  room  tortured 
by  cancer.  Terrible  it  was,  and  I  used 
to  go  away  from  the  house  hoping  that 
I  might  hear  they  were  both  dead  and 
out  of  their  misery  forever.  Only 
Engels  seemed  to  think  that  Karl  would 
get  better.  He  got  mad  as  a  hatter  when 
I  said  one  day  that  Karl  couldn't  live. 
But  when  Jenny  died  Engels  said  to  me 
after  the  funeral,  It's  all  over  with 
Marx  now,  friend  Fritzsche;  his  life  is 
finished,  too.'  And  I  knew  that  Engels 
v  spoke  the  truth. 

"And  then  Karl  died.  He  died  sit- 
ting in  his  arm  chair,  about  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  the  four- 
teenth of  March,  1883.  I  heard  the 
news  that  evening  from  Engels  and 
went  over  to  the  house  in  Maitland 

[82] 


THE    MAEX    HE    KNEW 

Park  Road,  and  that  night  I  saw  him 
stretched  out  upon  the  bed,  the  old 
familiar  smile  upon  his  lips.  I  couldn't 
say  a  word  to  Engels  or  to  poor  Eleanor 
Marx — I  could  only  press  their  hands  in 
silence  and  fight  to  keep  back  the  sobs 
and  tears. 

"And  then  on  the  Saturday,  at  noon, 
he  was  buried  in  Highgate  Cemetery, 
in  the  same  grave  with  his  wife.  And 
while  Engels  was  speaking  over  the 
grave,  telling  what  a  wonderful  phil- 
osopher Karl  was,  my  mind  was  wan- 
dering back  over  the  years  to  Treves. 
Once  more  we  were  boys  playing  to- 
gether, or  fighting  because  he  would 
play  with  little  Jenny  von  Westphalen ; 
once  more  I  seemed  to  hear  Karl  telling 
stories  in  the  schoolyard  as  in  the  old 
days.  Once  again  it  seemed  as  if  we 
were  back  in  the  old  town,  marching 
through  the  streets  shouting  out  the 


THE    MAKX    HE    KNEW 

verses  Karl  wrote  about  the  old  teacher, 
poor  old  Herr  von  Hoist. 

"And  then  the  scene  changed  and  I 
was  in  Bingen  with  my  Barbara,  laugh- 
ing into  the  faces  of  Karl  and  his  Jenny, 
and  Karl  was  picking  the  bits  of  rice 
from  his  pockets  and  laughing  at  the 
joke,  while  poor  Jenny  blushed  crimson. 
What  Engels  said  at  the  grave  I  couldn't 
tell ;  I  didn't  hear  it  at  all,  for  my  mind 
was  far  away.  I  could  only  think  of  the 
living  Karl,  not  of  the  corpse  they  were 
giving  back  to  Mother  Earth. 

"It  seemed  to  me  that  the  scene 
changed  again,  and  we  were  back  in 
Cologne — Karl  addressing  the  judge 
and  jury,  defending  the  working  class, 
I  listening  and  applauding  like  mad. 
And  then  the  good  old  Lessner  took  my 
arm  and  led  me  away. 

"Ah,  lad,  it  was  terrible,  terrible,  go- 
ing home  tfeat  afternoon  and  thinking  of 

[84] 


THE    MAKX    HE    KNEW 

Karl  lying  there  in  the  cold  ground.  The 
sun  could  no  longer  shine  for  me,  and 
even  Barbara  and  the  little  grandchild, 
our  Barbara's  little  Gretchen,  couldn't 
cheer  me.  Karl  was  a  great  philosopher, 
as  Engels  said  there  at  the  graveside, 
but  he  was  a  greater  man,  a  greater 
comrade  and  friend.  They  talk  about 
putting  up  a  bronze  monument  some- 
where to  keep  his  memory  fresh,  but 
that  would  be  foolish.  Little  men's 
memories  can  be  kept  alive  by  bronze 
monuments,  but  such  men  as  Karl  need 
no  monuments.  So  long  as  the  great 
struggle  for  human  liberty  endures 
Karl's  name  will  live  in  the  hearts  of 
men. 

"Aye,  and  in  the  distant  ages — when 
the  struggle  is  over — when  happy  men 
and  women  read  with  wondering  hearts 
of  the  days  of  pain  which  we  endure- — 
then  Karl's  name  witl  still  be  remem- 

[85] 


THE    MARX    HE    KNEW 

bered.  Nobody  will  know  then  that  I, 
poor  old  Hans  Fritzsche,  went  to  school 
with  Karl;  that  I  played  with  him — 
fought  with  him — loved  him  for  nearly 
sixty  years.  But  no  matter;  they  can 
never  know  Karl  as  I  knew  him." 

Tears  ran  down  the  old  man's  cheeks 
as  he  lapsed  into  silence  once  more,  atid 
the  Young  Comrade  gently  pressed  one 
of  the  withered  and  knotted  hands  to 
his  lips  and  went  out  into  the  night. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  BATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL    FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.   THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOUR! 
DAY  AND  TO  $I.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


MAY     2  1945 


JAN  22  1936 


FEB     3  1939 


JAN    30 


943 


II 

MM  28  19* 


LD  21-50m-8,'32 


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